| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Second Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling: But it is hard to tear a village from its moorings. They stayed
on as long as any summer food was left to them, and they tried
to gather nuts in the Jungle, but shadows with glaring eyes
watched them, and rolled before them even at mid-day; and when
they ran back afraid to their walls, on the tree-trunks they had
passed not five minutes before the bark would be stripped and
chiselled with the stroke of some great taloned paw. The more
they kept to their village, the bolder grew the wild things that
gambolled and bellowed on the grazing-grounds by the Waingunga.
They had no time to patch and plaster the rear walls of the
empty byres that backed on to the Jungle; the wild pig trampled
The Second Jungle Book |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe: judgement, and which I did verily believe would not answer the end it
was intended for; but all the abatement I could get was only, that
whereas the officer was appointed by my Lord Mayor to continue two
months, I should be obliged to hold it but three weeks, on condition
nevertheless that I could then get some other sufficient housekeeper to
serve the rest of the time for me - which was, in short, but a very small
favour, it being very difficult to get any man to accept of such an
employment, that was fit to be entrusted with it.
It is true that shutting up of houses had one effect, which I am
sensible was of moment, namely, it confined the distempered people,
who would otherwise have been both very troublesome and very
A Journal of the Plague Year |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Copy-Cat & Other Stories by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman: no longer anything but hats in the millinery shop.
The milliner in Wheaton, where Miss Carew lived,
had objected, for Jane Carew inspired reverence.
"A bonnet is too old for you. Miss Carew," she
said. "Women much older than you wear hats."
"I trust that I know what is becoming to a woman
of my years, thank you. Miss Waters," Jane had
replied, and the milliner had meekly taken her order.
After Miss Carew had left, the milliner told her
girls that she had never seen a woman so perfectly
crazy to look her age as Miss Carew. "And she a
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The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from The Atheist's Mass by Honore de Balzac: had died some time since, of which he would talk to me, asking
whether I thought the Church would allow masses to be said for
the repose of its soul. His dog, said he, had been a good
Christian, who for twelve years had accompanied him to church,
never barking, listening to the organ without opening his mouth,
and crouching beside him in a way that made it seem as though he
were praying too.
"This man centered all his affections in me; he looked upon me as
a forlorn and suffering creature, and he became, to me, the most
thoughtful mother, the most considerate benefactor, the ideal of
the virtue which rejoices in its own work. When I met him in the
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